If you want them to buy the parts (i.e. you're not shipping them your own parts), there's

Parts Cost10% Purchase & Exhaust cost (of your total Parts Cost)

+ shipping back to you.

When you say programming fee, do you mean programming microcontrollers / PLDs or some other type of programming? The reason I ask is my thinking is not to have them program it at all because that requires you to deliver the unencrypted object code to them which creates risks for you. Have appropriate headers as part of the design and do the programming yourself and lock it down. Or am I missing something?

It may look like nickel and diming us, but truth is, even with all these fees and shipping from China, it's still cheaper vs. having a US based company manufacture and assemble the boards.

I've sent inquiries to US based companies. They're very arrogant! 1. They freaking don't respond to you.2. If they respond to you and find out you're a small scale business, you never hear from them again.3. If they do continue to talk to you, it seems they freakingly almost rob you when they give you an assembly quote... their quote estimate is the equivalent of "here's your ridiculous high quote, now go away."

I tried to give jobs to US companies but they don't want to deal with a small potato like me. Fine with me... it's going to China.

vasquo, Have you looked at cbas-usa.com in CA?They've done small runs of boards for me.Set is $350 or so pick & place programming & stencil creation, then $4-8/PCB for assembly.Shipping back to you on your FedEx account (simple to setup, FedEx then bills your CC).Small company, needs payment via check prior to return. They don't do turnkey, you supply the material.

That looks nice. What CAD package did you use? I am going to have to teach myself a CAD package because I am getting mighty tired of soldering wires on pad-per-hole boards, which is how I do it now. If turnaround is 7 days on these things, I think I am going to do a project that I am planning in a month on a professional board like this.

I don't see a way to automatically send them the Gerbers and make an order on their site. A lot of shops have completely automated systems these days.

My first post here as I am just getting into Arduino, but I have designed a few boards. My favorite PCB CAD package for the the hobbyist/small-medium business user so far has to be DipTrace. It's not perfect but it's powerful and very intuitive to learn. I tried Eagle and a few others, this one was by far the easiest to go from knowing nothing to making boards. Just follow the included tutorial (its actually REALLY good). The number of good points is almost too long to list. Things like intuitive interface, easy to use, auto-router (which actually I seldom use but its good for beginners), 3D rendering of the board, logical fair pricing*, etc.

The biggest drawback that I have seen is their libraries. They are organized kind of weird, the library search function (which is a bit odd to use at first) really helps. From the interactions I have seen on their forum and via their reps on other forums (yes the developers actually read the forums and respond to users feature requests and bug reports), it seems they are starting to tackle that issue. They have started making more standard general libraries like (before things were grouped more by manufacturer). Making your own component libraries is about as simple and logical as you can get. I have made several dozen custom parts and many take almost no time at all. It's about as easy as making a PCB layout.

*They have both non-profit versions and for-profit versions. Their limitations between versions are based on number of pins and signal layers (not including ground and power planes which you can make unlimited of), unlike others which limit based on board size. So if you have a 1meter by 1meter board with just 10leds and a battery its fine. For the hobbyist, they have a free Non-profit version that allows two layers and 500 pins (my last project had 48 pins, an arduino board has well under 500 pins I think). Their definition of non-profit says you can't make a profit but selling a few boards for your hobby is OK.

Just received it and they quoted me 50USD for 10pcs 100mm x 100mm dual layer, red soldermask, top/bottom silkscreen on 16mm FR4.

That's 20USD more than Elecrow, so looks like I'll be sticking with them.

The OP said 5.2GBP for 130mm x 140mm, so I wonder if that was just per single PCB, ie 10 pcs was 52GBP? That would make more sense at about 80-90USD for 10 pcs 130mm x 140mm, based on what they have quoted me.

In my case it's EAGLE's limitation of 100mm by 80mm routing space so I never go beyond 100mm*100mm. Seeedstudio offers free shipping on $50 or more so I always order at least three different boards or one board with 50-100 pieces and some prototypes with 10 pieces for the free shipping.

Just received it and they quoted me 50USD for 10pcs 100mm x 100mm dual layer, red soldermask, top/bottom silkscreen on 16mm FR4.

That's 20USD more than Elecrow, so looks like I'll be sticking with them.

The OP said 5.2GBP for 130mm x 140mm, so I wonder if that was just per single PCB, ie 10 pcs was 52GBP? That would make more sense at about 80-90USD for 10 pcs 130mm x 140mm, based on what they have quoted me.

the board was double sided, 5.2 each including postage 7 day turnaround, for a 130mm by 140mm board, 81usd total

I'll probablly give Sitopway a try too. Digging around their website, I see they do PCB Assembly too (which PCBCart doesn't). And with small minimum orders too!

Yeah, PCBCart is a no-go for first prototype run, but for bulk orders of a proven design, it's great.

Another good company (based in Canada), but PCB manufacturing/assembly done with their partner in China, is Myro.ca Prices just a tad bit higher than PCBCart, but quality seems also better.... I *love* their gold plated pads option (but unfortunately, they don't do large areas of gold, like card edge fingers).

PCBCart do PCB Assembly from 2010 ,I am the Assembly technician of PCBCart. My job is PCBA Feasibility Analysis. so I know much about PCBCart.